Month: July 2008

That’s exactly what the flyer promoting the monthly at Black Mouse said. So I had not one but two surprises when I showed up around 9:15 ready to play. First of all, there was no one there running things (TJ showed up eventually and all was cool), and I don’t think we started until after 10:30. Second, the first two people I saw were Myles Harding and Don Smith (both sponsored by DGA- the bastards), so my preconceived notion of being the proverbial big fish in a small pond that day was immediately shattered.

When we eventually started, everyone that showed up was lumped into one division (fine by me!), and placed in three groups of five. First off hole one were me, Don, Myles, Sean Roybal, and Rob —. I started out hot for the first seven holes and grabbed an early lead, but cooled off in the middle and let Don and Myles get within a couple strokes on the back side of the course. We had one streak where everyone was hitting long birdie putts. In fact, the hottest guy at the end was Sean, but he had too much ground to make up and fell short.

By hole 16 I had a two-stroke lead with a downhill 30-footer for birdie. I went for it because Don was hitting everything and laying up was no guaranteed thing either, and of course it rolled enough to result in a -7 and -7 tie. After that, even though Myles had a couple chances to make it a three-way tie, we all parred out to result in a first-place tie between Don and I. We decided to split the cash, but still had to settle bragging rights. I wanted to get revenge for Don’s victory over me in sudden death after the Schaeffer Park tourney last Fall. If I had know it would take 10 HOLES, though, I would have settled for the tie!

I was already in hot water because we started late and ended late, so I just wanted to end it one way or the other. The problem was, every hole I birdied he birdied, and when I parred he parred. We were cursing each other for ‘not winning it’. Then came the penultimate hole, a short uphill with a blind dogleg right. My disc hit a tree and left me 35-feet short and obscured by more trees, and Don’s went right at it hard. When I got to my disc I for some reason thought he was based, and went for my only birdie option, a right-handed backhand shot around a redwood stump- and I made it! Don then walked down past me and saw that his disc had sailed past the basket and down the slope 60 feet away. I had maybe 20 seconds to celebrate my victory (and more importantly the END of the playoff) before Don nailed his impossible do-or-die attempt. To push it to the next hole. Wow! Ugh.

In what could be nothing except anticlimactic Don based the next quirky short hole, and I hit a tree, then clanged my long birdie throw. The end.

Like this:

For some reason- injury, age, other distractions (those #*! Ankle-biters!). . . who knows- my game has slipped a couple notches in the past 12 months. After a career high player rating of 999 I’m down to 982, and my distance has seen some deterioration as well. The down-side is that I was at a point where I could beat anyone at DeLa on any given day, and now I have distinctly second-tier feeling. But I’ve noticed an upside as well. I seem to have more casual golf fun, and notice things I might not have noticed in the past. Take these pictures, for instance: Two are of a ‘beer bottle terrarium’ at an undisclosed place on the course. Jason Esper showed me this unique little wonder, and the only hint I’ll give you is that your disc could easily skip off this bottle en route to a drop-in birdie. (And if you haven’t noticed yet, the reason it’s unique is cuz a miniature garden of clover grows inside the bottle, with just enough air, sun, and moisture to survive.
The other picture is of my Special Edition Soft Rhyno sitting in the remains of a broken up, rotten oak tree on the left side of hole 21. The disc is the exact same color as the rotten oak remains in which it lies, and our group all noticed it at the same time. Thanks to JD, my awareness of such artistic subtleties was tuned in nicely.

So, cool stuff. And the golf wasn’t bad (for me) either. I defended my #008 tag against Sof and Gregory, -5 to +3 to +7, respectively. I also fended off a challenge from Sof and Jason Esper on Wednesday, so for a second-tier guy that’s not bad.